As part of their on-going series, the New York Times published an informative article about how to choose a good nursing home. Read the full article here: “Stressful but Vital: Picking a Nursing Home.”
If you have additional questions, please see the Nursing Home Abuse page on our website. At HensonFuerst, if you have questions, we have answers.
One of the many lessons of the still-developing story of Britthaven of Chapel Hill is that sick, elderly nursing home residents may be easy targets if the nursing staff wants to slip an extra pill or two into their patients’ medication allotment to ensure that the residents remain unresponsive and sleepy–a form of chemical restraint.
There is currently an investigation by the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) about how patients in the Alzheimer’s unit of Britthaven of Chapel Hill wound up testing positive for strong opiate narcotic medications… drugs that had not been prescribed. Several of the nursing home residents were hospitalized, and one died. (Read more and see our videos about this case here: HensonFuerst Britthaven videos and stories.)
The state of Massachusetts has a similar problem. According to the Boston Globe, nearly 2,500 nursing home residents were given powerful antipsychotic drugs that were not intended or recommended for their medical conditions. Data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services show that thousands of Massachusetts nursing home residents were given these psychotropic medications that–and here’s the similarity with Britthaven–could act as chemical restraints and had not been prescribed.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice filed lawsuit against pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson for paying kickbacks to Omnicare Inc., the nation’s largest pharmacy that specializes in dispensing drugs to nursing home patients. How did they learn about it? Good-hearted whistleblowers stood up and spoke for the helpless–and drugged–patients. (Read more here: DoJ press release)
It’s all starting to sound like the plot for a movie: Kickbacks… chemical restraints… helpless patients… narcotics… lawsuits… whistleblowers.
It’s not a movie, it is the reality of our parents and grandparents, the people we love who can no longer care for themselves. We commend the whistleblowers, and anyone else who sticks up for nursing home residents. In our eyes, they are heros. The lesson for the rest of us is to monitor medications of our loved ones. If your family member is in a nursing home:
A recent New York Times article talks about a nursing home danger most of us don’t even consider–beds with rails. Although rails are commonly used to protect frail patients from accidentally rolling out of bed, their design actually poses a danger of entrapment, when a patient get trapped between the rail and the mattress.
According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), although entrapment is uncommon, when it happens the results can be disastrous. They have documented 480 deaths, 138 injures, and 185 “close calls” …but experts believe that many more cases are never reported.
The NYT article was written by Paula Span, who wrote a terrific book called “When the Time Comes: Families with Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.” In the article, Ms. Span quotes Dr. Steven Miles, a geriatrician bioethicist at the University of Minnesota:
The ultimate solution would be to establish manufacturing standards so that no bed has a dangerous gap between mattress and rail, just as one can no longer buy a crib that could entrap an infant. “We value babies more than elderly nursing home patients,” Dr. Miles observed.
Meanwhile, here’s his straightforward counsel about how to distinguish a quality rehab facility or nursing home from an unsafe one: “Count off 10 beds. See how many have rails in use. If more than one or two in 10 beds have rails up, walk out of the facility.”
Click the link to read the full article: New York Times bed rail article.
And to read the FDA’s guidance about hospital bed safety, which includes a diagram of hospital bed entrapment zones, click here: Hospital Bed Safety.
To read more about legal issues surrounding nursing homes, visit our site here: HensonFuerst Law.
There is a very moving story in the April issue of The Atlantic magazine, written by a man who found himself utterly unprepared for the aging and decline of his father. Like millions of middle-aged Americans, he had to find a way to cope with the crisis. This article strives to give a voice to this silent family struggle.
It really is a must-read… read the whole article here: “Letting Go of My Father,” by Jonathan Rauch.
There’s an interesting article, complete with resource links, in today’s New York Times about how to decide which is the best care for ailing, elderly parents. Check it out here: NYT: Deciding on Care for Elderly Parents in Declining Health.
It was horrifying to families that had already lived through the tragedy of having a loved one diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. As reported in the media, 9 residents of the Britthaven of Chapel Hill nursing home tested positive for strong pain medication–opiates–that hadn’t been prescribed to them…one later died.
Now, ENCtoday.com reports that the incident and the facility are under the microscope from the NC State Bureau of Investigation and the Medicaid Investigations Unit of the Attorney General’s office. One new twist: the Kinston-based Britthaven “also has come under scrutiny for its financial contributions to political campaigns in recent years, thanks in large part to the efforts of Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina.” (ENCtoday.com)
As reported:
According to WRAL, Britthaven employees and Britthaven’s parent company, Hillco, gave more than $175,000 to state political candidates during the 2004 and 2008 elections. The donations went to Republican and Democratic candidates equally.
Impressive. But that kind of political spending won’t buy Britthaven a way out of this investigation…and it certain doesn’t give peace of mind to families of current residents.
To learn more about nursing home abuse, and what to do about it, visit our website at www.lawmed.com.
In response to continuing reports of deaths, abuse, and substandard care at long-term nursing facilities, the Senate Finance Committee has opened an investigation. The company in the spotlight is Select Medical Corporation, a for-profit long-term care provider with 89 facilities in 26 states, including North Carolina. (They own Select Specialty Hospitals in Durham and Winston-Salem.)
The investigation will focus on the deaths and poor treatment of seriously ill patients. According to a an article in the New York Times, these hospitals treat 200,000 patients each year, but rarely have full-time physicians on staff. In one particularly disturbing example, a dying patient’s heart alarm sounded for 77 minutes before nurses responded.
I think we can all recognize that this is horrendous care, but some people may wonder why the government would bother to get involved…and why the Senate Finance Committee. The answer comes down to funding.
The [Senate Finance] committee has substantial power over long-term care hospitals because it oversees Medicare. The federal program spends almost $5 billion annually on the hospitals, providing about 60 percent of their total revenue. (quoted from the New York Times article by Alex Berenson.)
While it is always heartening to see investigations into specific companies that are doing wrong, it looks like this particular issue may have widespread benefits for all of us:
In a separate letter, the senators asked that the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative agency, examine federal and state oversight of all long-term care hospitals, saying that they worried the facilities might expose patients “to an unreasonable risk of harm.”
Finally…hope for reform, from Medicare on down!
Today’s The Daily Tar Heel has a terrific editorial about the heartbreaking saga of abuse at Britthaven of Chapel Hill nursing home. At HensonFuerst, we would like to commend and echo the conclusion:
“Britthaven itself needs to seriously evaluate its commitment to those it serves. Real and fragile lives are at stake.”
According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, another Britthaven nursing home facility is in trouble, this time for the death of a resident by abuse and neglect.
A former nursing assistant at Britthaven Nursing Home in Pineville, Kentucky, left a partially paralyzed man unattended and without support. The man fell and later died of complications from the injury. The nursing assistant has been jailed and is being held on $500,000 cash bond.
The comment from Britthaven officials? The same thing we’ve heard from them before: Nothing.
What does that tell us about how much Britthaven officials care? Everything.
For more information about nursing home law, see our dedicated web page.
A lovely article in the New York Times (“Old Age, From Youth’s Narrow Prism“) by Marc E. Agronin, M.D., describes how those of us who have not yet attained old age often make off-base assumptions about how the elderly think and feel. We project our own fears and beliefs onto them, while also presuming that we know what they must be thinking. We, the younger, are often wrong.
Can you remember when you were 13? To a teenager, people who are 30 are old, people who are 40 are ignored as impossibly old, and if you’re over 50? Well, life is over, right? Until you turn 30…40…50, and you realize that your older life is not at all what you had thought. How do you explain that to the teenager?
The same with old age. There are changes, to be sure, but there is also life. There is the potential for love and enjoyment. Even in a nursing home, as the New York TImes article so poignantly illustrates.
That’s yet another reason why the poor conditions at Britthaven of Chapel Hill Nursing Home are so disturbing. For years, this nursing home has be cited as providing substandard care, but according to Medicare reports, improvements are not made. That makes it a “Special Focus Facility.” And then came the reports of what seems to be inappropriate medicating of some Alzheimer’s patients with powerful opiates.
HensonFuerst has been at the forefront of fighting for the dignity and rights of people in nursing homes. This article is another reminder that “old” does not mean “oblivious.” Our elderly deserve to be nourished, their lives enriched, regardless of where they live.